[Haskell-cafe] List as input

[Toby Hutton]

On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 9:01 AM, Dan Weston <westondan at imageworks.com> wrote:
> Google "median order statistic".
>
> E.g. this is an interesting (and colorful) discussion:
>
> http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/6-046JFall-2005/60D030CD-081D-4192-9FB5-C220116E280D/0/lec6.pdf

Hrmm, maths and statistics definitely aren't a strong area for me, but
doesn't that PDF say on the second page that choosing i = 0 or i = n
or i = median is equally naive?  The rest of the document describes
other interesting methods for getting the pivot.

I couldn't follow the Wikipedia page on order statistics though.
Still, with no assumptions as to the contents of a list whatsoever,
when choosing 1 element to be the pivot, intuitively it makes no
difference which one you choose.  (Then again, I find statistical
analysis rarely is intuitive.)